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If, while reading this, you are unexpectedly seized with the notion that you are alone in the Universe, that is to say, that everything you perceive, including every person, place, or thing that you have ever experienced, is but a figment[n.1] of your imagination, abstain from panic, pause, breathe (both directions) and consider the contra evidence.
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Note 1: As a unit of measurement, a figment is notoriously unreliable (not least because Spinoza proved conclusively that it is not even a unit of measurement, for which he was excommunicated, being thus compelled to forfeit his "loaner" tefillin). Once favored, principally, by certain over-priced alternative victualleries, the term was long ago jettisoned as a commercial standard, cast aside for the more prosaic, but practical, "skosh," the plural of which was once proposed to be "skoshie," until the WTO put the kibosh on that rather insane idea.
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The evidence of which we speak abounds. No matter how deranged you think you are, there are certain things that even your subconscious would not conjure because they are too painful to contemplate. Ergo, you would not have inflicted them upon yourself, as the Ego would simply have forbidden it. (Ergo...Ego).
The list is long, to be sure, but some of the stand-outs include: (1) People on the train seemingly glancing in your direction, but, in point of fact, looking right through you, while talking into their hidden mouthpieces (so that it looks as though they are just mumbling loudly to themselves), announcing their take-out selection to their spouse waiting at the next stop at such obnoxious decibels that one hundred and twenty three perfect strangers know what they are having for dinner (chicken); (2) the fingernails-across-a-blackboard-like howl of the fisher cat, and; (3) fingernails across a blackboard.
Thus, to the extent that you had supposed that you were the only living, feeling, thinking being, and that everybody else was just a robot put here as a cruel joke to satisfy the sadistic amusement of an indifferent Creator, be of good cheer and be now disabused: 6 billion other people are thinking precisely the same thing at this moment.
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Note 1: As a unit of measurement, a figment is notoriously unreliable (not least because Spinoza proved conclusively that it is not even a unit of measurement, for which he was excommunicated, being thus compelled to forfeit his "loaner" tefillin). Once favored, principally, by certain over-priced alternative victualleries, the term was long ago jettisoned as a commercial standard, cast aside for the more prosaic, but practical, "skosh," the plural of which was once proposed to be "skoshie," until the WTO put the kibosh on that rather insane idea.
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The evidence of which we speak abounds. No matter how deranged you think you are, there are certain things that even your subconscious would not conjure because they are too painful to contemplate. Ergo, you would not have inflicted them upon yourself, as the Ego would simply have forbidden it. (Ergo...Ego).
The list is long, to be sure, but some of the stand-outs include: (1) People on the train seemingly glancing in your direction, but, in point of fact, looking right through you, while talking into their hidden mouthpieces (so that it looks as though they are just mumbling loudly to themselves), announcing their take-out selection to their spouse waiting at the next stop at such obnoxious decibels that one hundred and twenty three perfect strangers know what they are having for dinner (chicken); (2) the fingernails-across-a-blackboard-like howl of the fisher cat, and; (3) fingernails across a blackboard.
Thus, to the extent that you had supposed that you were the only living, feeling, thinking being, and that everybody else was just a robot put here as a cruel joke to satisfy the sadistic amusement of an indifferent Creator, be of good cheer and be now disabused: 6 billion other people are thinking precisely the same thing at this moment.
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